On the Diversity of Memory and Storage Technologies

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent developments in memory and storage technologies, discussing their impact on data management systems and the potential evolution of storage hierarchies due to technological diversification.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current memory/storage technologies and explores their future roles in data management and system architectures.

Findings

Diverse memory and storage technologies are shaping new storage hierarchies.

Emerging Storage-Class Memories are influencing data management strategies.

The traditional storage hierarchy may evolve into multiple tailored hierarchies.

Abstract

The last decade has seen tremendous developments in memory and storage technologies, starting with Flash Memory and continuing with the upcoming Storage-Class Memories. Combined with an explosion of data processing, data analytics, and machine learning, this led to a segmentation of the memory and storage market. Consequently, the traditional storage hierarchy, as we know it today, might be replaced by a multitude of storage hierarchies, with potentially different depths, each tailored for specific workloads. In this context, we explore in this "Kurz Erkl\"art" the state of memory technologies and reflect on their future use with a focus on data management systems.